Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande eBook

[8] I quote it in the completer and more beautiful
form in which it appears on page 57, measures 1-3.

IX. THE FOUNTAIN

[Illustration: Modere]

It is repeated, with still more magical effect (scored
for divided violins and violas, two muted horns, and
harp), as Melisande remarks upon the clearness of
the water, while the violins and violas weave about
it a shimmering figure in sixteenth-notes with which
its appearances are usually associated. As Pelleas
warns Melisande to take care, while she leans above
the water along the marble edge of the basin, the
clarinet, over a string accompaniment, announces an
impassioned phrase (page 62, measure 3)—­the
theme of Awakening Desire:

X. AWAKENING DESIRE

[Illustration: En animant]

As Pelleas questions Melisande about the ring with
which she is playing,—­her wedding-ring,—­and
when it falls into the water while she is tossing
it in the air, we hear persistently the theme of Fate,
which, with the Golaud theme (portentously sounded,
pp, by horns and bassoons), closes the scene.
There is an interlude in which the Golaud,
Melisande, and Fate themes are heard.

The rhythm of the latter theme mutters ominously in
the bass as the second scene is disclosed. When
Golaud, lying wounded on his bed, describes
to Melisande how, “at the stroke of noon,”
his horse “swerved suddenly, with no apparent
cause,” and threw him, as he was hunting in
the forest ("could he have seen something extraordinary?"),
the oboe recalls the theme of Awakening Desire,
which was first heard as Melisande and Pelleas sat
together by the fountain in the forest during the
heat of midday. The rhythm of the Fate
motive is hinted by violas, ’cellos, and horns
as Golaud, in answer to Melisande’s compassionate
questioning, observes that he is “made of iron
and blood.” Melisande weeps, and the oboe
sounds a plaintive variant of her motive (page 82,
measure 2); the strings repeat it as she complains
that she is ill. Nothing has happened, no one
has harmed her, she answers, in response to Golaud’s
questionings: “It is no one. You do
not understand me. It is something stronger than
I,” she says; and we hear the Pelleas
theme, dulcetly harmonized, in the strings. When,
later, Golaud mentions his brother’s name inquiringly,
and she replies that she thinks he dislikes her, although
he speaks to her sometimes, we hear, very softly,
the theme of Awakening Desire. As their
talk progresses to its climax, there is a recurrence
of the Fate theme; then, as Golaud, upon discovering
the loss of her wedding-ring, harshly tells her that
he “would rather have lost everything than that,”
the trombones and tuba declaim (page 99, measure 5)
a threatening and sinister phrase which will later
be more definitely associated with the thought of
Golaud’s vengeful purpose: